Monday 18 July 2011 15.30 EDT
First published on Monday 18 July 2011 15.30 EDT

Another day, another character in this saga crashes out, as John Yates succumbs to the inevitable. The moving finger moves on, and the country goes eyeball to eyeball with the triumvirate that only two weeks ago struck terror into the heart of power. Now? A rumpled old man fast losing grip on the empire he created, a woman on bail after a 12-hour police station grilling and a son whom shareholders will probably disinherit.

Gone will be the father's nonchalant hubris. Gone the swaggering thuggery of his son's speech lacerating the BBC. Gone, too, is Rebekah Brooks's warm welcome in every corridor of power. There may be no great revelations: Tom Watson MP, one of the few dogged truth-hounds in this scandal, calls it a slow slicing of the cucumber, one sliver of information after the next. Let us gawp at those who only a fortnight ago held the mighty in the palm of their hands.

From zero to hero in a fortnight, Ed Miliband has blindsided David Cameron so far. He demanded parliament stay an extra day to debate these events: Cameron had to concede. Now Miliband calls on Cameron and Nick Clegg to join him in seeking media ownership reform, with a judicial inquiry to prevent Murdoch-style hegemony. Only parties standing together can confront the bully press: if they refuse, they publicly admit their bondage.

But is there more to come? The Mail on Sunday reported that Cameron intended to hire the BBC's Guto Harri as his press secretary. So close, apparently, was the appointment that the Harri family visited the Camerons one weekend in 2007 at Chipping Norton to discuss it, but the job went to Andy Coulson after Rebekah Brooks "is said to have told Mr Cameron that the post should go to Mr Coulson to strengthen links between the Tories and News International". Is this true? Reviewing the papers on the Andrew Marr programme on Sunday, I pointed out this story and said Harri was well-known in the BBC as a straight-as-a-die, honest man. I was pleased to get a text from Harri just after the show saying "Thanks". Does that mean it is true? I called Harri, who now works for Boris Johnson, to check. Yes, he said he'd heard tell that his name was not acceptable to News International. "I heard it as gossip on the grapevine – but I have no idea whether or not it's true. Yes, I did talk to David Cameron about taking the job – but whilst I lingered they'd clearly approached Andy Coulson." He had a good idea who the source from the Sun was for the story. How Cameron must wish he had given Harri the job. The idea that News International planted their man in the heart of Downing Street is truly shocking.

The Labour camp smells the fear wafting out of Downing Street. What is it that has them so rattled? Cameron has admitted meeting Murdoch executives 26 times in 15 months – but it emerges there were more occasions, many other walks and rides. Labour asks if he ever discussed the BSkyB deal with James Murdoch or Rebekah Brooks? "No," would be an improbable reply. The cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell has taken an unusually long time to answer Labour MP Ivan Lewis's letter asking if he was informed of private warnings not to employ Coulson. The wobbly, dilatory response to a growing list of questions breeds new rumours: surely it can't be true that News International friends hacked or otherwise stole Labour secrets before the election and passed useful information to the Tories? No, no; that was Watergate.

Everything has changed for Labour, at least for now. Ed Miliband was first to see that here at last was the chance to stand up to bullies, first to push for lasting change, no more crawling, as he said in today'sspeech denouncing "large concentrations of power that lead to abuses and to neglect of responsibility". He linked all the "powerful people who answered to nobody", the out-of-control bankers, the tax-avoiding corporations, dishonest MPs who had indulged in a "culture of entitlement" and News International "which thought it was beyond responsibility". Here is a David slinging stones at the Goliaths who overshadow democracy, making people feel it's hardly worth voting.

High risk? It might have been for Blair, but not for Miliband – because he has nothing to lose and everything to gain. This is why in the difficult choice between two able brothers it was right to choose the one who could break free from the past, least contaminated, most able to start afresh. Jonathan Powell, ,explains well why bending at the knee to the press seemed necessary back in 1994. We can never know whether, in the glory days after 1997, Blair had the electoral strength to take on anti-democratic forces in the press, the City, the super-wealthy and all the currents called "globalisation" that made democratically elected governments too weak and markets too strong. After 18 wilderness years, perhaps it was understandable that the risk didn't look worth taking.

But after this break with the past Blair's recent warning to Progress against any shift from the "centre ground" sounds like a wail from yesteryear. There is no obvious centre ground, but there is high ground to claim. The low ground Blair and Brown occupied on the press leaves them behind once and for all. Yesterday is over.

Maybe Miliband will be crushed by the might of an 80% rightwing press, which certainly isn't going away: Dacre's Mail is, if anything, even more intimidating than Murdoch. What's changed is that Miliband can point to them as part of the anti-democratic malaise. He might not win, in which case he never would have done. But if he stays on this course without flinching, he has a good chance of seizing the day.

Now polls show Miliband picking up a bit, Cameron falling back a bit. Do the public care about all this? The 10 separate inquiries launched into the many tendrils of this creeper may bore or bamboozle the voters. But the big truth is out there already, and everyone knows it. Politicians were willing to sell their souls for good press coverage, Cameron was willing to sell huge media dominance. No wonder the bitter Sir Paul Stephenson suggested his decision to hire Coulson's deputy looked rather less serious than Cameron's decision to hire the editor himself – yet only the policeman fell on his ceremonial sword. And no wonder there was a dearth of Cameron defenders stepping forward from Tory ranks yesterday.

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